It has seemed a little odd not to be sketching for the last 11 days, and this evening after dinner I thought it would be relaxing to get out the digital drawing pad and do a little painting. So while I won’t be making a picture every day, there’s no reason not to post a […]
Also tagged landscape, nature, oil, pastelDay three hundred and fifty-five: For those who have studied Surrealist photography, this image may be familiar. It’s a photograph made around 1930 by Man Ray of the movement’s leader André Breton. I’ve known about it for several years now, and have always found it strange and delightful. When I started sketching it this evening, […]
Also tagged abstract, face, oil, pastelDay three hundred and fifty-four: Tonight’s sketch is loosely based on a floating figure in a print made by William Blake around 1800. I believe it was an early white line etching, although I don’t know many details about how it was made or the exact process. When I briefly looked at an impression the […]
Also tagged figure studyDay three hundred and forty-one: I spent some time this afternoon browsing through boxes of prints by anonymous artists from the 15th and 16th centuries. There were many interesting sheets, both peculiar and lovely, and largely forgotten. My sketch this evening is based on a detail from one striking 16th-century Italian engraving of Christ healing […]
Also tagged pencilDay three hundred and thirty-nine: I so thoroughly enjoyed sketching Ganesha yesterday, that I quickly turned to another ancient sculpture for today’s sketch. This study is based on a 1st-century Roman puteale, or round well-head, decorated with twelve deities. The original stone well can be seen today at the archeological museum in Naples, Italy.
Also tagged ancient, pencilDay three hundred and thirty-eight: A visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Asian galleries this afternoon led to my encounter with “Dancing Ganesha,” a sandstone sculpture made circa 750 in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, India. Today’s sketch focuses on a detail of the Hindu deity’s elephant head. I was quite pleased to find myself able […]
Also tagged pencilDay three hundred and twenty-two: Today I spent a couple of hours looking at small books made by the self taught artist, James Castle. This sketch imitates one of the figures that appears repeatedly on the tiny, brittle pages, and is often cloaked in a quilt-like pattern of checks and spots.
Also tagged figure study, oil, pastel, watercolorDay three hundred and twenty-one: This afternoon I had the pleasure of spending a little time with an expert on Japanese prints who was visiting from Washington D.C. We looked at an example of “Red Fuji” in the PMA’s collection, which turns out to be a very fine, early impression of the classic color woodcut […]
Also tagged landscape, nature, woodcutDay three hundred and nineteen: Tonight I felt like playing with ink and wash in an old master style. So I found an 18th-century drawing in the Thrivent Financial Collection, and tried to imitate a small part of it. What you see here is the head and shoulders of Joseph, as drawn by the Venetian […]
Also tagged face, pen and ink, watercolorDay three hundred and eighteen: Since I usually work with prints, I guess I’ve tended to make sketches after them. There are, however, illuminated manuscripts in the collection at work, which date to a time before printing. At least in the West (the Chinese were using woodblocks for printing as early as the 9th century). […]
Also tagged face, gouache